Overshadowed
Level 1. Scores 0 to 25. The doubt is loud and it is running things.
The doubt is loud and it is running things. On your answers, the feeling of performing rather than leading is strong, you expect to be found out, praise does not land, and you are managing the feeling by covering: not asking the question, overpreparing, and telling nobody. Whatever your record says, the feeling has the floor.
Before you read on: this is not a diagnosis and not a label. It is a score on twelve statements. If the last month has included more than doubt, if sleep has gone, if the feeling has spread from work into everything, the note at the foot of this page comes first, not a coach and not this page.
Now look at your Feeling versus Record gap, because at this level it is the number that matters. If the gap is large and positive, your record is materially stronger than your feeling admits: you can name a hard call that turned out right, people have chosen to work with you more than once, and the doubt is not tracking any of it.
That is the pattern this test was built to catch, and the honest thing to say about it is that more evidence will not fix it, because evidence is what you have been discounting. If the gap is small or negative, your record is also thin or you cannot see it, and that is a different, more practical problem: an experience gap that feels like an identity one.
I became CEO of a company inside a large corporation at thirty seven. I am Swedish born, and English is my second language. So I sat in senior rooms in a language the others had grown up in, sure the gap showed. I also grew up with Jantelagen, which says you should not be more than someone else just because. It is a very efficient voice for telling you that you do not belong in the chair.
What helped was not more preparation. It was separating the feeling from the record. The feeling said I would be found out. The record said people were choosing to work with me. I started reading the record. And I stopped carrying it alone. I still keep a peer group of my own, because you cannot always be the teacher.
One thing to do this week, and it is item twelve. Find one person and say the sentence: "I do not always know what I am doing in this role." A peer, a coach, a former boss. Not your team and not your board. The concealment is the part of the pattern that keeps it going, because it means nobody has ever told you that they feel it too, and most of them do.
Look at your Cover bar. If it is your lowest, the overpreparation and the unasked questions are costing you hours and teaching you nothing.
Next step: if the doubt arrived with exhaustion, check which came first with the leader burnout test.
Next step
This test is not a clinical instrument and your result is not a diagnosis. It is a score on twelve statements about leading, written by a coach, not a clinician. If the feeling has spread from work into the rest of life, if sleep, appetite or health have changed, or if the last month has held more than doubt, please talk to your doctor or to someone you trust before you read any more of this page.
A coach, a peer group and a page like this one come after that, not instead of it. When I think a client needs a doctor or a therapist first, I tell them so in those words, and we do not start coaching until they have made that call. Coaching starts where there is frustration and a wish to move. Fear, grief and a body that has stopped coping belong with a clinician, and there is nothing weak about going there first.
The other results
- Second GuessingThe doubt is present, not in charge, and expensive.
- Finding FootingYou have doubt and a record, and the record mostly wins.
- GroundedThe feeling is quiet and the record is in view.
About this result
This is one of 4 results from the Imposter Syndrome Test for Leaders, a free tool that shows the score without an email. Aggregate figures are at the statistics page once 30 completions have been reached. More free tools are at the tools shelf.